With the rapid development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, radio frequency (RF) coil technology, as an indispensable part of MRI technology, has also taken great strides forward (e.g., phased array coils with 8, 16 or even 32 channels). Coils may be divided into three types according to structure: linear coils, orthogonal coils, and phased array coils. A phased array coil includes multiple linear coils or orthogonal coils, each linear coil or orthogonal coil being a coil element. The phased array coil may receive RF pulses of the main magnetic field from multiple directions at the same time, while there are also multiple data acquisition channels matched thereto.
An MRI apparatus includes, for example, an RF coil device and an imaging control device. The RF coil device includes multiple coil sets. Each of the coil sets further includes one or more coil elements. Each coil element transmits RF signals to the imaging control device via an RF channel.
An existing receiver coil channel selection (RCCS) device includes multiple switch elements for controlling a connection relationship between input RF channels (e.g., connected to output RF channels of the coil elements) and output RF channels. For example, if there are 24 coil elements, 24 input RF channels and 16 output RF channels, then the number of switch elements is 16+(24−16)×16=144. See FIG. 1 for the input RF channels and output RF channels controlled by the switch elements. The horizontal axis shows the 24 input RF channels, while the vertical axis shows the 16 output RF channels. x represents a switch element. The number of switch elements used in this solution is quite high.